The Lives of Enslaved African Americans: Struggles and Resistance

1. Chapter 8-2, 8-3 & 9-1

2. The Lives of Enslaved African Americans • Including the colonial period, slavery had been an American institution for two centuries. • Enslaved African Americans were held in every colony, northern and southern. • In the North, slavery continued to exist in some form until the 1840s. • By 1860 nearly 4 million African Americans lived in slavery in the South.

3. The Lives of Enslaved African Americans • Enslaved men, women, and children worked every day of their lives, from the time they were old enough to perform chores until they were too old to be of any more use to the slaveholder. • Most enslaved people lived on farms or plantations in the South, where cotton was a leading crop. • They worked planting, tending, picking, processing, and loading cotton. • Other jobs included the many other tasks needed to maintain a farm or plantation, such as constructing and repairing buildings. • Other plantation slaves worked as servants in the slaveholder’s house.

4. The Lives of Enslaved African Americans • Some enslaved people were skilled artisans, and many worked as blacksmiths, bricklayers, or carpenters. • Some slaves lived in cities where they worked in factories and mills, in offices, and in homes. • Others worked in mines or in the forest as lumberjacks.

5. The Lives of Enslaved African Americans • A life of want • Enslaved African Americans were provided with inadequate food, clothing, and shelter. • They seldom received medical care; sickness rarely stopped their work. • They had no rights under the law because it viewed them as property.

6. The Lives of Enslaved African Americans • Many slaveholders treated their slaves relatively well. But they generally did so in order to secure loyal service, not out of any great sense of humanity. • Some slaveholders used a wide variety of punishments, such as beating, whipping, starving, and threatening a person’s family members, to ensure obedience. • Children were routinely separated from their parents, brothers from their sisters, and husbands from their wives. • African Americans developed ways to survive and bring some light into their lives through religion, storytelling, and music.

7. The Antislavery Movement in the South • In 1860, about 215,000 African Americans in the South were free blacks. • Former slaves who had been emancipated, or freed, by slaveholders • More typically, some were free because their ancestors had been freed. • They still faced harsh legal and social discrimination. • Free blacks aided people escaping slavery and spoke out for freedom. • Slave revolts • An uprising led by Nat Turner in 1830 became the deadliest slave revolt in American history. • New laws were enacted to strictly limit the movements and meetings of slaves.

8. The Antislavery Movement in the South • Some enslaved people chose a nonviolent way to end their enslavement—they escaped. • They tried to reach the free states of the North or Canada or Mexico, where slavery was illegal. • No one knows exactly how many slaves escaped. • Thousands attempted escape, and although most were soon captured, many did make it to freedom. • Underground Railroad: an informal, constantly changing network of escape routes • Sympathetic white people and free blacks provided escapees with food, hiding places, and directions to their next destination, closer to free territory. • Harriet Tubman: famous Underground Railroad worker who had escaped slavery and helped hundreds of slaves to freedom

9. The Abolition Movement • The abolition movement was a campaign to abolish, or end, slavery. • No other movement attracted as many followers, garnered as much attention, elicited such strong feelings, or had such an impact on the history of the United States. • The abolition movement had deep roots in religion. • Many religious people in the North saw slavery as a clear moral wrong that went directly against their beliefs. • By 1836 more than 500 antislavery societies existed.

10. The Abolition Movement • Opposing abolition • Southern slaveholders: an attack on their livelihood, their way of life, and even on their religion • Slaveholders and politicians: slavery was essential to the economy; by 1860 cotton accounted for about 55 percent of the country’s exports • Northern workers: freedom for slaves might mean more competition for jobs Abolition leaders • William Lloyd Garrison: published an abolitionist newspaper for 35 years, until slavery was abolished • Sarah and Angelina Grimké: sisters who were outspoken campaigners for abolition and women’s rights • Frederick Douglass: a former slave,supported women’s rights, but is best remembered as an abolitionist leader

12. Conditions throughout America led many middle class people to seek reform and change society for the better.

14. Religion Sparks Reform • During the 1820s and 1830s Americans attended revivals and joined churches in record numbers. • This religious movement was called the Second Great Awakening. • Many preachers preached that through dedication and hard work people could create a kind of heaven on earth. • Across the country, tens of thousands of Americans became determined to reform, or reshape, American life. • The Second Great Awakening helped launch the Reform Era. • From 1830 until 1860, many Americans attempted to reshape American society. • They were called reformers.

15. Religion Sparks Reform • One of the main goals of the temperance movement reformers was to reduce the use of alcoholic beverages. • Reformers wrote books, plays, and songs about the evils of alcohol, which they linked to sickness, poverty, and the breakup of families. • In 1851 reformers persuaded legislators in the state of Maine to outlaw alcohol. • Over the next several years, some 12 states followed suit.

16. Transcendentalism and Utopianism • Transcendentalist movement: members of this movement believed in a philosophy called transcendentalism. • Transcendentalism is the belief that knowledge is found not only by observation of the world but also through reason, intuition, and personal spiritual experiences. • Two leading transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. • Both expressed the transcendental belief that people should be self-reliant and trust their intuition.

17. Transcendentalism and Utopianism • Thoreau held that people should act according to their own beliefs, even if they had to break the law. • Another reform movement of this era was the utopian movement. • Some reformers believed in creating new communities that would be free of social ills. • These communities became known as utopian communities, after the word utopia, which means “a perfect society.”